Henry Ford made a lot of money making cars at one time, but that was a small advantage to him compared to the benefit to millions of people who for the first time in their lives were emancipated from common public carriers and could live where they wanted, move at the hours they wanted, to the places they wanted. Ford collected a billion bucks, but that was peanuts compared to the benefits.

Friedman stumbled in, late to the seminar as usual and reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey. He hadn't read the paper being presented, and halfway through he just gets up, walks up to the podium, socks the mother****er right in the face and takes a piss all over his lecture notes.

And yet I would not freely exchange my science for those of my fellow laureates. They are forever confined in their professional discussions to the small numbers of their fellow scientists.

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.

If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time at the airport.

There is only one social science and we are its practitioners

I recall my mother asking in about 1946 what I was and I replied proudly that I was a professor. A decade later she repeated her question and I repeated my answer. "No promotion?" was her comment.